Via Sociological Images.
That’s why you should become scientists, kids! (Because engineers don’t have sex. You want me to spell it out for you?)
I really should just leave it at that, but the sprawling, multifaceted stupidity of this public service announcement — apparently having sex, like smoking the wacky weed, kills brain cells and will cripple your SAT scores, or something — is difficult to let pass without comment. The immaturity of our cultural attitudes toward sex is flat-out embarrassing. There are real concerns that adolescents should be taught about — disease and the risk of unwanted pregnancy being the obvious ones. But they should also be taught that, as long as you are careful about such things, there is nothing wrong with having sex. Done correctly, it can be fun! Sure, there can be emotional trauma, awkward moments, broken hearts, impetuous late-night phone calls that you wish you could take back the next day. But these are downsides associated with life, not with sex per se.
But as a society, we’re too uptight and hypocritical to say these things. Instead, we get stuff like abstinence-only sex ed, with predictable results. And adolescence, which isn’t going to be an easy time of life for most people no matter how much sensible advice they are given, becomes just that much more agonizing and uncertain.
Except for engineers, of course! They have it figured out.
That domesticated – in the wild anything goes!
James #49
You totally miss the point. We are not scoffing at your attitude (perfectly reasonable). We are scoffing at people who wants to paint a false dichotomy between “having a career” and “having sex”.
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Naomi, I agree with everything you wrote. Personally, I was too distracted when I was growing up to notice any pressure (and you know, I do miss those years when the boys were too nervous/inexperienced to cope with anything more than hours of what I now recognise as foreplay) (well, not really, it’s all a bit awkward) (darn, I’m suffering from an attack of parenthecitis again). But I have two nieces at the moment; the older one is growing up really, really fast, and I hope she comes to her Auntie A before she does anything she might regret.
(Look at me simultaneous arguing for less prudishness while not wanting a young person to rush into having sex!)
John Knight: conservative web site releases study that not only contradicts every other study ever done on the issue, but promotes their particular right wing world view! I’m dying of not surprise.
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Aramael: If you actually read the article, you will notice that it cites several different studies that report positive results for abstinence-based programs.
From a social-science standpoint, the difference between these studies and the Conventional-Wisdom studies appears to be that the CW studies do not adequately control for demographic variables. I
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HUMANS THINK SEX IS EMBARRASING THING BUT IT’S VERY NORMAL TO HAVE SEX BECAUSE TEENS WANT IT!TEENS SHOULD HAVE SEX BECAUSE ANIMALS DON’T REGRET SEX.SO WE SHOULDN’T IN PREPUBERTY BEING FORCED TO HAVE SEX,I THINK HUMANS HAVE DEVELOPED THROUGH MODERN HUMANS SO IT’S ILLEGAL! NO IT’ ISN’T! TEENS AND THE BEGINING OF AGE OF PUBERTY CAN HAVE SEX BECAUSE TEENS ARE SEXUAL ACTIVE.IT’S NOT PRIMITIVE YOU SHOULD HAVE SEX BECAUSE HUMANS THEN CAN SURVIVE ANYTHING!